Many women worldwide use tampons during menstruation to help control or stop bleeding. The international medical community also uses tampons to help in medical applications like stopping or reducing bleeding from a bullet wound. Tampons are undeniably a part of modern culture and have grown to be a common household product with a large consumer base.
Because tampons absorb bodily fluids like blood and vaginal discharge, their use, removal, and disposal presents sanitary and other toxic exposure and disposal challenges. Tampons for personal use are oftentimes used and discarded in a private, unregulated setting, like a restroom at a business, which creates a situation that is ripe for exposure of the bodily fluids to people other than the tampon user and is also ripe for exposure of the bodily fluids to the tampon user herself.
Generally, tampons are currently available in a few forms—with and without a tube-in-tube style applicator. Regardless of the form, tampons are packaged in a disposable wrapper that, once opened, is no longer usable for any particular purpose and is promptly discarded. The current tampon wrappers provide a container for storing the tampon but serve no other purpose.
Frequently, the tampon user has to first remove the existing, used tampon before placing the new, fresh tampon. To do so, she uses her hand and usually extracts the tampon by gently pulling a string attached to the distal end of the tampon or pulls on the tampon itself. The tampon strings and the tampons can be difficult to grip especially if they are soaked in bodily fluids. Oftentimes during the extraction process, the tampon user comes into direct contact with her bodily fluids and also exposes her sensitive vaginal area to any contaminants that might be on her hands. Further, she discards the used tampon along with any other materials she might use to help remove the tampon, such as toilet paper or other paper products, in a nearby trash receptacle of some kind. For those tampons with applicators, the applicators are also discarded after being placed and they too are contaminated with bodily fluids.
The removal and disposal of tampons creates a sanitary and hygienic problem. The tampon users often have difficulty gripping the tampon or the tampon string to remove it. The tampon users and others are exposed to bodily fluids when they discard tampons in an uncontrolled environment like a restroom. During the extraction process, bodily fluids sometimes soil the tampon user's clothing or other items. The used tampons can create a foul odor and a toxic environment for those people who are tasked with cleaning the trash receptacles. Tampon packaging is not recycled or reused for any purpose and creates waste.
Therefore, there is a need in the art of tampon packaging to create a multi-purpose, sanitary, easy-to-use, cost-efficient packaging that has a low manufacturing cost.